epn: European Pensions & Investment News articles from April 2003

epn: European Pensions & Investment News archives from April 2003

News: Achmea underperforms for 83% of z-score clients.(Largest commercial pension fund manager, PVF Achmea)
April 14, 2003... The Netherlands' largest commercial pension fund manager has been delivering sub-par results, according to epn analysis of the latest release of z-scores, which measure the relative performance of active investment managers. PVF Achmea,...

News: Pension managers' quest for alpha.(Brief Article)
April 14, 2003... In a recent conversation with epn, Frits Bosch, director of the Dutch consultancy Bureau Bosch, aptly summed up the dilemma facing European pension managers. "Funds need alpha," he said. "Pension fund managers are reluctant to go into more...

Scheme News: Stork fund takes action.(Stork trustees pursue civil action)(Brief Article)
April 14, 2003... The trustees of Dutch pension fund Stork are pursuing civil action against the scheme's former director, L J van Gastel, who was fired in February on suspicion of embezzlement. The E1.85bn fund has been run since van Gastel's dismissal by...

Scheme News: Morgan Stanley restructures German institutional marketing division.
April 14, 2003... Morgan Stanley Investment Management is looking to hire for its German institutional marketing division following the departure of executive director for central Europe, Dr. Peter Konig. There are understood to have been disagreements about...

Scheme News: In search of alpha.(pension fund ABP retools hedge fund investment strategy)(Company Profile)
April 14, 2003... ABP, Europe's largest pension fund, made news recently in announcing it was revamping its hedge fund investment strategy. No longer, they said, would the Dutch giant be content to invest through multi-managers. From now on, ABP would place its...

Asset Management News: UBS won E4.5bn last year.(UBS Global Asset Management )(Brief Article)
April 14, 2003... UBS Global Asset Management won close to E4.5bn in European business from new or existing institutional pension clients in 2002, and has garnered over E2bn already this year. But the figure was marred by the E1.9bn the group lost in the 12...

Asset Management News: Access Swedish property via index certificates.(Aberdeen Property Investors, Barclays Capital market Swedish property index certificate)(Brief Article)
April 14, 2003... Aberdeen Property Investors and Barclays Capital are marketing a SKr3bn (E327m) Swedish property index certificate, which will entitle investors to returns based on the Swedish property market. The annual income return, which is payable on a...

Asset Management News: Platinum offers the fund for all seasons.(Platinum Capital Management launches fund)(Brief Article)
April 14, 2003... Platinum Capital Management (PCM) has launched its Platinum All Weather Fund. The portfolio, which is available in US dollar or euro, is invested in broad based equity index baskets and aims to take advantage of mispriced options and option...

Regulation: Measure your own risk.(Dutch pension funds get new freedoms regard risk, under new regulations)(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... Pension funds in the Netherlands look set to get unprecedented freedoms to determine and measure their own risk levels, under a new regulatory framework due to come into effect in 2006. The Dutch pensions and insurance supervisor, the PVK, has...

Regulation: ABP slates lax EU information requirement.
April 14, 2003... Europe's largest pension fund - the E133bn ABP fund for Dutch public employees - has criticised the EU's occupational retirement directive for the paucity of its information requirements: "No product in the world offers such poor quality of...

Regulation: EU Watch.(European Court of Justice ruling discussed)
April 14, 2003... Another blow has been struck in the European Court of Justice for the freedom of goods and services in the savings sector. Earlier this month the advocate general reached a preliminary ruling that Sweden could not continue to discriminate...

National Statistics: Netherlands - Doomed to let history repeat itself.(equity losses saddling Dutch pension funds)(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... For two years running, market watchers warned that equity losses were dragging Dutch pension funds down. Make that three. Retirement schemes have slashed their equity allocations from 47% in 1999 to 36% in 2002, but with average -30.5% return...

Comment & Analysis: Radical changes and safe options.(pension funds squeezed by bear market)(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... With pension funds under extreme pressure after the three year bear market, many voices are crying out for a change in the "system", a fundamental shift in our best practice model. One of the buzz words receiving a lot of attention is the...

Comment & Analysis: Cyclical or structural?(the potential for expansion or contraction of the global economy discussed)
April 14, 2003... Despite the markets' susceptibility to the influence of the Iraqi conflict, it is important to assess the probability of the global economy expanding or contracting in 2003. While opinion seems divided on the subject, the voice of pessimism and...

Leader: Saving face by passing the buck.(England rattles pensioners)(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... It appears that England will be the next country to follow Switzerland in shaking from older generations any sense of security about their benefits. Last month we reported on how the government in Bern was thinking of reclaiming benefits...

Survey: Investment banks - Winning new clients' trust.(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... When New York state attorney, Eliot Spitzer, launched an investigation into the probity of investment analysts on Wall Street, could pension funds expect anything but good to materialise? The publicity boom which has followed the work of...

Survey: Investment banks - The truth's too much of a good thing.(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... The chief executives of European industry must feel that they have nowhere to hide from investment analysts. On the one hand, the likes of Rolls-Royce are under fire for multi-million pound gaps in their pension funds under FRS17. On the...

Survey: Investment banks - Tailoring the assets to liabilities.(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... A problem for any senior company executive dealing with the concept of consulting actuaries within investment banks will be: what makes them different to a Watson Wyatt, or a Mercer, or a Hewitt? Beyond these big three multinational names,...

EPN Quarterly Investment Survey: Nurturing investments through hell and high water.(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... EPN's latest quarterly investment survey shows that Europe's largest institutional asset managers are quite shaken by the developments of the war in Iraq. Chief investment officers responding to our survey have indicated that world growth...

Research Update: Measuring the future burden of pensions.(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... There is widespread talk about the burden of future pensions. The evidence raised in the debate focuses frequently on figures such as the contribution rate to fund pensions in the future. In some cases, these contribution rates are projected to...

Investment Research: Are government bond returns at risk from inflation?
April 14, 2003... When thinking about the future performance of government bonds, you could do worse than remember Irving Fisher's famous interest rate hypothesis. It stated simply that the nominal interest rate is equal to the real interest rate, plus expected...

Pensions Snapshot: Norway.(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... Norway's pension system is dominated by the Petroleum Fund, a state-owned and managed silo for storing revenues from oil against future needs. Effectively underpinning a generous system of state pension benefits, the fund is large: by the end...

Pensions Snapshot: Norway - In brief.(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
April 14, 2003... - Two new pension laws came into force in January 2001, reforming the fiscal and regulatory framework for defined contribution schemes. Prior to this, defined contribution (DC) plans only qualified for tax exemption on their expenses, but post...

News: French government set for pension showdown.(unions and Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government are set to clash over plans to extend average French working life)
April 28, 2003... Unions and Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government are set to clash over plans to extend the average French working life. Nearly one-third of male professionals in the private sector, and 21% of their female peers have stopped early thanks to some...

News: Asset managers split over strategy.(Brief Article)
April 28, 2003... A deeper push into Europe is a big concern for many of Europe's leading asset managers, but cutting costs is still a worry. In epn's pan-European asset management survey, which covers close to 20 firms and up to a trillion euros in total...

News: Solid business structure helps Deutsche maintain AA rating.(Fitch maintains credit rating of AA for institutional business of Deutsche Asset Management)
April 28, 2003... Rating agency Fitch has maintained a credit rating of AA for the institutional business of Deutsche Asset Management (DeAM), a unit of Deutsche Bank. Fitch said in a statement that the rating reflected DeAM's "solid business structure" on the...

Scheme News: Russell predicts 3% premium.(Robert Ross, senior consultant at Frank Russell, adds his voice to support for British pension funds' traditionally high allocation to equities )
April 28, 2003... A senior consultant at Frank Russell has added his voice to support for British pension funds' traditionally high allocation to equities. Robert Ross, in his first major external paper for the firm, states that equities will continue to...

Scheme News: Custodian services provided by JPMorgan for TKP's E2.1bn assets.(TKP Pensioen, Dutch pension administrator, appoints JPMorgan Investor Services as global custodian for E2.1bn of its assets)(Brief Article)
April 28, 2003... TKP Pensioen, the Dutch pension administrator, has appointed JPMorgan Investor Services (JPMIS) as global custodian for E2.1bn of its assets. JPMIS will provide custody, accounting, compliance monitoring and securities lending. Jan Willem...

Scheme News: Prudential migrates to the Continent.
April 28, 2003... Prudential Investment (Luxembourg) has acquired its first direct property in continental Europe. The 2,875 square metre property, which is situated in central Paris, contains two retail units leased on 12-year terms to clothing stores, Etam and...

Asset Management News: CSAM takes aim.
April 28, 2003... Credit Suisse has launched its Credit Suisse Bond Fund (Lux) Target Return that aims to post a return of six month Euribor plus 250bps, about 5% net at current rates. The fixed income product, which will have no equity exposure other than via...

Asset Management News: Delisting of Unigestion's public shares to regulate activity of assets.
April 28, 2003... Unigestion Holding, the Swiss based asset manager, has made a public offer for all of its publicly-held bearer shares. The SWX Swiss Exchange has accepted the request to delist the company and the final day's trading of the company's shares...

Asset Management News: In search of alpha.
April 28, 2003... Over the last two years, while the Dow Industrials lost some 15% and the FTSE fell 30%, the Moscow Times Index has rocketed 130%. It is a difference tha is hard to ignore Mattias Westman, director of Prosperity Capital Management, claims a 22%...

Economics and Regulation: Living under a dark cloud.
April 28, 2003... War aside, there is little to be optimistic about, according to Pictet Asset Management's latest Global Outlook. "Investor sentiment has moved back up to above average levels in recent weeks and markets are clearly still betting on a more...

Economics and Regulation: Change looms for Europe as adoption of retirement directive is officially approved.
April 28, 2003... The EU Council indicated this month that it will formally adopt the directive on occupational retirement provision. This will pave the way for the legislation to be adopted by member states by 2005. However, accession countries are likely...

Economics and Regulation: EU Watch.
April 28, 2003... The latest EU report on adequate and sustainable pensions shows that over the last seven years, Finland has been the most successful in encouraging employment among its older workers. Since 1995, the country has seen an 11% increase in the...

Comment & Analysis: Russians' pensions revolution.
April 28, 2003... Russia's new pension design borrows from Sweden and ignores the ill-fated south American experiment in defined contribution. Russians are to get three types of state pension in future. First, a modest flat pension, paid for on a pay-as-you-go...

Comment & Analysis: To dip or not to dip.
April 28, 2003... The question of economic recession is very pertinent as this would have a major impact on equity valuations and the direction of global bond yields. The double dip scenario would entail further interest rate cuts globally, the equity markets...

Leader: Looking for a new rhythm.
April 28, 2003... It is a sorry state of affairs when every asset manager in town wants to beat the drum for emerging markets investments as some alpha-tastic cure for underfunded pensions. I say in town, but I could more accurately write "in the City". It...

Survey: Asset Management - Pick of the bunch.
April 28, 2003... European asset managers are struggling to meet the demands of a Europe-wide audience, according to the results of epn's pan-European asset management survey. Of the 16 managers responding in full to the survey, only four could boast a presence...

Survey: Pan-European Aasset Management - Insights on the main players.
April 28, 2003... Last year was a difficult 12 months for European asset managers. Assets were eroded as the equity markets tumbled and, while corporate downgrades and defaults reached historic highs, the slump in the fixed income market added extra problems....

Research Update: The equity premium: Different perspectives.
April 28, 2003... After three years of global bear markets, the debate on the nature of the equity premium is no longer a mere academic discussion, as practitioners as much as academics wonder whether it is possible to rationalise the "most important, but...

Pensions Snapshot: Germany.
April 28, 2003... The heady months of the Riester-reforms brought the sleepy and neglected world of German occupational pensions to the fore. However, the first few months of 2003 have brought a new sense of perspective to the German pensions market and the high...

Pensions Snapshot: Germany - In brief.
April 28, 2003... - A survey carried out by the Germ- an Institute for Pension Provision (DIA) found that only 5m - or 16% - of the 30.48m eligible citizens have taken advantage of the so-called Riester incentives for supplementary pension provision. This means...